Utilising your school website effectively, can help you save valuable time and money. Here are five simple steps to get your website to work for you.

When holding events at school where parents or the local community have to book places or attendance, such as parents evening, open days, nativity plays, fundraising evenings make sure to utilise your school website effectively and get it to work for you.

Create a booking form to obtain all the booking details you require from your attendees. This form can be submitted directly to the member of staff who is responsible for collating bookings. You can do this easily with School Edit.

Create an event in your Events Calendar – and include a link to a booking form.

Enter the events’ promotional news and details into your Latest News section which should be shown on your school websites’ home page. Within this Latest News article – again put a link to the booking form specifically designed in relation to this event.

If you use Twitter or Facebook – broadcast the event through these medias and include a link to the booking forms.

If you email to parents/guardians then you can include a link to the news article which will already include a link to the booking form.

Once you have entered the details into an Events Calendar, Latest News and created a booking form, you will no longer have to locate information or details again and again as you simply direct everyone to your school website for details.

Using your school website as a marketing tool to promote events and also as an administration tool to collate booking information will help save you valuable time and money. Getting quicker responses and also saving money on print. Promoting your events in the latest news section on the school website home page will give more publicity and better attendance.

Don’t forget – if you have created a form for a regular event it can be used time and time again.

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